Pokémon GO Balance Update – November 21, 2016

Today marks another massive balance update to Pokémon GO, along with another event!

Thanksgiving Event

The US holiday Thanksgiving is this week and Niantic has a neat event coming our way! As a thank you to us trainers, Niantic is giving us DOUBLE XP and DOUBLE Stardust during the duration of this event!

Start: November 23rd at 00:00 UTC

End: November 30th 00:00 UTC

If you’re an Ingress agent and own a GO Plus, you’ll be able to benefit from both this event and Niantics Ingress 4 Year Anniversary event as well! Elsewise it might be time to dual up on devices or make some hard choices on which game you’re going to dive hard into.

Combat Power Adjustments

“We have made adjustments to the CP (Combat Power) of various Pokémon. Some Pokémon, such as Alakazam, Rhydon, and Gengar will have their CP increased. Others will have their CP lowered. These changes will allow a more balanced and competitive battling and training experience in Gyms. We will continue to adjust the CP going forward to improve the game balance when necessary.”

There were so many cool Pokémon that capped out at much lower CP compared to some of the top tier Pokémon. My otherwise weak and disappointing Gengar has made it into my top 6 CP Pokémon along with Jolten (the very weakest of the Eevee-lutions)! It’ll be interesting to see where this new meta takes us, especially with the recent balance changes made to gyms.

There is a massive community effort on Reddit started by /u/itsallveryblurgh to determine which Pokémon were nerfed, and which were buffed. This is their compiled list thus far: